Welcome to my websight. I am a medical professional from Australia. Online privacy is an interest of mine, but not my area of expertise. I also have no “special need” for online privacy: I am not an investigative journalist, or a politician, and I am not hiding from anyone. But I am resentful of the fact that privacy has became a currency. The readers of this site are likley to be very aware, but a “free email account” is not free, it is paid for with privacy. The worst part is, this is not a consentual transaction in which privacy is exchaged for a service. Rather, many “buyers” remain unaware of the price they have to pay.
When people learn of my passion for online privacy they are often supprised to learn that I have a facebook account and I use it to share things with my family and friends – the same as everyone else. But what they don’t understand is this: There is a very very big difference between data that I chose to share, and data that is stolen without my concent. When I upload content to my social medial platform, I am choosing to share that data. But when the social medial platform uses technologies to track my browsing history even when I am using the platform, and build a profile of every website that I have visited and use it to target advertasments to me…well, that is a very different thing. The first is me choosing to provide data; but the latter is, in my opinion, data about me being stolen. They are not the same thing.
The “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument is incorrect. Everyone has something to hide. Noone wants to turn up to a gym, provide their name and phone number and then get a different quote to the other customers based on their “profile”. Although I’d probably get a discount: I imagine I would be profiled as someone who buys too much fast food, works a lot and is unlikley to show up to a gym very often. But in all seriousness, my point is this: once this database about you is created you will likley have no power to decide how it is used for or against you. The future is very data rich – brace yourself for it. I predict that data mines will influence your job applications, loan approvals, gym memberships, maybe even discounts in various stores etc etc.
I guess if you’re worried someone might be tracking you, you could always read their privacy policy, right? No, not right. I have found these to be vaigue and in-descript. Not to mention the fact that when you browse the web you are “interacting” with many organisations and bits of code that are kind of “behind the scenes”. You may not know of their existance, let alone their privacy policy.
Sooo finally, what is the the solution? Drum role please…In my opinion it is the following 3 step plan:
- Step 1: Seek an understanding of the technologies that trackers use to steal our data
- Step 2: Seek an understanding of the tools we can use to block these technologies or prevent them from working
- Step 3: use these technologies
I’m rarely intersted in what potential tracker claims they do. I’m always more intereted in what a potential tracker would be technically capable of doing.
You wouldn’t leave your house unlocked just because everyone in the town claimed they were not going to break in; and I wouldn’t want to be possible for people to steal data about me online, even if they claim they don’t. In other words, I think we should make it technically impossible for trackers to steal data about us, even if they try. That is my goal, and that is what this site is about.
Reclaim Your Digital Life 